Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-07-18
SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.
A Glance at its known History
md Extinct People.

A Glance at it's known History
and Extinct People.
The recent sale of Catalina Island
by the trustees of the Lick estate to a
syndicate who intend to turn it
into modern pleasure resort, with
hotels, summer cottages, bathing
houses, boating courses, fishing
grounds, ETC., invests that popular
summer haunt for camping with an
interest which warrants us in giving
our readers sketch of its earliest his
tory.
The modern visitor, in his rambles
over the island, discovers numerous
traces of its early occupation by a
tribe of aborigines who were not alto
gether destitute of art, and who had
considerable knowledge of tools. Low
mounds covering extensive spaces in
land from the beach are common.
These are supposed to have been the
burial places of the original inhabi-
tants, and the excavator into these
hummocks is rewarded with great
variety of trophies that doubtless con-
stituted the votive offerings of
friends to the names of their dead.
He will upturn curiously-wrought
shells, pendants that were once the
ear ornaments of women, stone
vessels of various kinds, pipes fash
ioned out of clay, pestals, metates and
other articles for preparing food, and
great quantities of shells, Clipped into
the shape of circle and pierced in
the center. These shells were the
money of the Indians of the whole
southern coast, and Santa Catalina, as
well as Santa Rosa Island, seem to have
been the general mint, where the coin
was gathered in its rude shape and
of the tribes. When the whites first
came amongst the coast Indians, this
shell money represented a definite
value in exchange. The worth of Il
rial was put on II string which passed
twice and half around the hand, and
eight OF these strings represented the
value of a silver dollar 1t may there
fore be inferred that wherever in their
burial mounds large deposit OF these
shells are unearthed, there was laid
the ashes of some notable Catalef1o.
The island is about twenty-three miles
long by three or four in width. The
west side is constantly assailed by the
whole sweep of the Pacific ocean, and
is therefore, q rough coast, and not
inviting. But to the leeward side,
fronting on the channel, is always
calm. The sea, excepting when there
is blow from the southeast, rests like
sheet of glass, almost motionless, up
on the sloping beach. This is what
makes that side of the island so pleas
ant place for bathing and boating
and fishing. Yet, placid as is its sur
face, the sheer of the the beach is so
abrupt, that deep water is soon reached ;
hence those who are not swimmers
cannot, excepting in shoal places
formed by outreaching arms OF land,
venture very far away from the shore.
THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.
All of the early explorers who visit
ed Santa Catalina Island agree in
their accounts of the superiority, physi-
cally and intellectually, of the origi-
nal inhabitants they found there.
That island, as well as those more
northerly, were first discovered by
Cabrillo in 1542. Salmeron, in his
Relaciones, and Torquemada, in his
Mondrguia Indio, declare that the
women of Santa Catalina care hand
some and virtuous, and the children
white, with light hair and ruddy
cheeks and good-natured faces.
The original names of these
Indians was Pineugnas, and Farnham,
Hugo Reid and other chroniclers tell
us that the tribes of the mainland
held this island in great respect for
their prowess in battle and their supe-
riority in the arts of peace. Perhaps
in nothing was this superiority more
strikingly shown than in their "ships."
These, although only large-sized
canoes, were marvels of triumph in
the ship-building art, and indeed did
not look contemplate when compared
with the large-sized, junk-shaped ves-
sells in which the early navigators
themselves explored these waters.
Niscaii1o, who stopped at the Island
in 1902, describes their boats as "little
barks." They were made with
planks strongly fastened together and
paid with bitumen. The prov and
stern were both equally sharp and
raised high above the centre, and
gave them graceful and formidable
the same testimony as to the size and
form of the Catalina ships; and Tor
quemada and Salmeron are equally
clear as to their great size, and the ve-
locity with which these little ships
were propelled through the waters of
the channel by twenty men working
each broad-bladed paddle. 1t
is this superiority of the Cata-
lefIos in their war ships that
Made them respected and feared by
all the tribes of the mainland. In
deed, they were fearless and brave
people, and frequently made expe-
ditions to the coast and brought their
enemies to grief. They were select
race in every particular-physically
and intellectually; and secured from
the inferior tribes, with which they
came in contact, that submission and
homage which is always given to a
superior race.
THE ARIsTOCRATs OF THE ABORIGINEs.
The fact that the islanders were a
higher order of being than the dwell
lers on the mainland, who are de-
scribed by FACES, in his Nos,relles an
males des Toyageurs, as of small stat
ure, and poorly endowed Intellectually
and physically, leads us to conjecture
that the Pineugnas were really and in
fact an aristocracy who, from their
island home, with their invincible
navy, ruled the squalid tribes of the
mainland. We have seen that they
possessed one very important power,
that of furnishing the other nations
with money. This would give them
the control OF the purse; as their war
ships and personal prowess gave them,